Of This and Other Worlds (Book)

     C. S. Lewis Of This and Other Worlds (1982) A compilation by Walter Hooper of both published and unpublished essays on literary matters, mostly on fantasy and science fiction. As a quote from a review says: Much of the essential Lewis is here. The essays do of course repeat many ideas, but Lewis writes so well one doesn’t mind. His major contribution is his insistence that fantasy (“fairy tales”) is not a child’s taste, since many (most?) children don’t like it, and many adults do. He also has good things to say about proper criticism, on the nature of error and truth, and so on.
     In good Aristotelian fashion, Lewis makes careful distinctions between description (which is more or less true) and expression (which is more or less honest.) He also is good on subtle errors of thought. His essay “The Death of Words” ought to be read by every language arts teacher: it will help them explain why expressive or ascriptive adjectives should be avoided, for example. He notes how words that once described social facts, e.g., “gentleman”, decayed into mere and vague expressions of approval. The source of this deterioration? Well meaning people who don’t want to accept the social distinctions implicit in the term, since many non-gentlemen are of course morally superior to many gentlemen. These people then want to use the term not in its social denotation but in its “true sense”, i.e., as a description of the moral ideal connoted by the term. Lewis dryly points out that a word surrounded by qualifiers such as “true sense” is a word that has lost its meaning. And he expresses regret: what men cannot name they soon become unable to think about. (In this, he agrees with Orwell, of whose 1984 he says that the appendix on Newspeak is the best part.)
     Lewis has a tendency to digress, which usually leads to even greater insight. His review of The Lord of the Rings, for example, occasions some thoughts on theocracy and ideological tyranny that explain a lot of recent politics. He hints that ideology is the modern form of an ancient perversion of religion, but doesn’t expand the hint. Never mind; the hint is enough.
     All in all, a delightful book. Lewis as usual exhibits his ability to explain complex ideas by means of homely examples, and his style is a model of clarity and elegance. The difficulty of the essays varies. **** (2000)
     Update 2013: Lewis's shrewd remarks about language constitute a nice layperson's account of Wittgenstein's theories. "The limits of my language are the limits of my thought", Wittgenstein said. He meant it in more radical way than Orwell did, I think. It could be rephrased as "That which we cannot imagine we cannot discuss." Consider science: we in fact cannot frame a theory which we cannot, somehow, imagine. I don't mean imagine in a physical sense: I mean "form images of." Ideas are images. Theories are built out of ideas.
     Update 2020: The "interpretations" of the mathematics that constitute physics show how difficult it is to talk sensibly about that which we cannot imagine. The math works: the formulas predict observations, usually to an astonishng degree of precision. The interpretations mislead, because they cause the reader to form images based on their experience. Thus "force" is what you exert with your muscles. "Work" is sweating, and it's a shock to realise that if you sweat failing to move a large rock, you have not done any work. Well, it's a little more subtle than that, in that you have used  energy to tenswe your muscles, etc, so that you have in fact done some work. But not as much as you feel you've done.